Review Roundup: Sandra Bullock, Jack Black and Larry David Face-Off

Odd couples — namely a boss/assistant, hunter/gatherer and May wife/December husband – dominate this week’s slate of new summer releases. Only one film really has a shot at preventing dude comedy “The Hangover” from three-peating as the box office victor over the weekend, however. Guess which!

In “The Proposal,” Sandra Bullock temporarily sheds her girl-next-door sunniness to play witchy book editor Margaret Tate. When Margaret, a Canadian, realizes she’s about to be deported, she forces her assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her — but not before he negotiates for a promotion. When he join his family in Alaska, hijinks ensue.

“Critics don’t get beaten down by god–awful movies (they can be fun—hello, ‘Showgirls’!). The ones that kill are the bland ones, the by–the–numbers movies that studios grind out like toxic sausage. The latest cinematic definition of insipid is ‘The Proposal,’ a romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.” [Rolling Stone]

“‘The Proposal,’ in fact, appears to have been written using a secret cache of computers stored beneath Walt Disney HQ since 1978—codename “Pete Chiarelli,” the first-time screenwriter who receives credit for having pilfered every rom-com convention since the invention of breathing…Or, perhaps, it’s the product of a book of MadLibs in which spaces are left blank for The Handsome Male Ingénue Specializing in Cocked Eyebrows, The Former Rom-Com It-Girl on Comeback Trail Who Looks 10 Years Younger Than Her Age, and The Ex–’Golden Girl’ as Dirty-Minded Grandmother. ” [Village Voice]

“Why is [Bullock] demeaning herself with such shoddy goods? She’s a talented woman with a faithful following. She has made formula films of varying quality before, and her fans may well swallow this one, but it’s a formula for disappointment laced with dismay.” [WSJ]

“‘The Proposal’ recycles a plot that was already old when Tracy and Hepburn were trying it out. You see it coming from a great distance away. As it draws closer, you don’t duck out of the way, because it is so cheerfully done, you don’t mind being hit by it.” [Chicago Sun-Times]

“Though it falls short of winning our hearts completely, ‘The Proposal’ is a serviceable and intermittently funny romance made enjoyable by the sparks between Bullock and Reynolds. [USA Today]

In “Whatever Works,” Woody Allen’s latest comedy, L.A.-based curmudgeon Larry David stars as New York-based curmudgeon Boris Yellnikoff, a sarcastic physics-professor-turned-chess-teacher. Members of a Southern family, made up of Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr. co-star, alternatively weave into his life.

“Woody Allen’s latest comedy marks his cinematic return to New York after stints in Spain ( ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’) and London (‘Match Point,’ among others). But hold the homecoming fanfare. ‘Whatever Works’ is a slapdash composition built around a single note.” [Newsday]

“Somewhere in “Whatever Works” is the grit of a great movie. It would be a movie in which Allen interrogates his own nostalgia; in which the Larry David character, rather than being handed a free pass, would have his fatalism tested by a younger generation.” [New Yorker]

“On the face of the Woody Allen canon, ‘Whatever Works’ is a zit.” [New York Observer]

“The title ‘Whatever Works’ is the two-word summation of Yellnikoff’s philosophy of existence, the notion that life is so brutal and depressing that “any way you can filch a little joy in this pointless black chaos” should be embraced. How little joy you are willing to accept from a movie will determine your reaction to this less-than-entrancing film.” [Los Angeles Times]

Directed by Harold Ramis, “Year One” stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as a pair of hunter-gathers (Black is the talky hunter, natch; Cera, the nerdy gatherer). When the duo are banished from their tribe for eating forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, they make their way through the Old Testament.

“‘Year One,’ to paraphrase the Geico car insurance ads, is humor so simple even a caveman will appreciate it. Correction: Make that only a caveman.” [Washington Post]

“Talk about a disaster of Biblical proportions. ‘Year One’ falls flat from its genesis to its outtake-filled credits scene, never moving beyond obvious set-ups or jokes that have been as beaten to death as Abel. The one person who’ll be happy after walking out may be Will Ferrell, since ‘Land of the Lost’ is no longer the only turkey around.” [NY Daily News]

“Any good will the movie generates, though, is grated right back off by Black, whose obnoxiousness has lost whatever charm it once possessed. “Year One’’ matches him stride for puerile stride, playing like a lesser Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road’’ movie rewritten by a team of potty-obsessed 12-year-old boys.” [Boston Globe]

“‘Year One’ has a handful of chuckles, but it’s also harmless and scattershot, without much primitive bite. These targets were savaged far more cuttingly 30 years ago, in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian.’ Then again, that was satire. This is just silliness run mildly wild.” [EW]

“Despite its irreverence, the pic seems unlikely to pique interest by courting religious opposition. Unlike Kevin Smith’s ‘Dogma,’ ‘Year One’ so muddles its orthodoxy and telescopes its timeline as to make any protest seem more absurd than the film.” [Variety]